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About Michael J. Miller

Miller, who was editor-in-chief of PC Magazine from 1991 to 2005, authors this blog for PC Magazine to share his thoughts on PC-related products. No investment advice is offered in this blog. All duties are disclaimed. Miller works separately for a private investment firm which may at any time invest in companies whose products are discussed in this blog, and no disclosure of securities transactions will be made.

AMD Launches New FX Desktop Chips, Plans 64-Bit ARM Servers

Amidst all of the Hurricane Sandy craziness, AMD announced that it plans to create 64-bit ARM server products, aiming at production in 2014.

AMD CEO Rory Read said the new chips "will transform the data center computing environment today" as AMD will focus on dense servers. Read said the company will use the Freedom Fabric from SeaMicro, which it recently acquired, to connect multiple processors. He added that fabric is the "only production-ready supercomputer fabric on the planet." One key difference is that the fabric will allow both ARM and x86 processors. "It won't happen overnight but it's a journey we began over the past year," Read said.

AMD Senior Vice President and General Manager of Global Business Units Lisa Su said that the company plans to launch the first ARM-based servers in 2014, but will also continue to make x86-based server processors. It will look at server APUs that combine processors cores with graphics for certain workloads. Each of the options will be designed for particular workloads, and Su said there is no "one size fits all" in the data center.

A lot of the details are still unclear. For instance, will the company use standard ARM cores or create its own custom cores? Still, it is a huge change in direction, although one the company has been hinting at for a while by talking about "heterogeneous system architecture and doing other deals with ARM.

Now AMD is far from the first company to announce work on 64-bit ARM-based server chips. Indeed, in late August, Applied Micro said it plans to have a 64-bit ARM-based CPU known as X-Gene available later this year and just a couple of weeks ago, Calxeda announced that it too is planning 64-bit ARM-based servers for 2014. Meanwhile, other companies like Cavium and Nvidia (with its Project Denver) are talking about 64-bit ARM solutions. Companies like Marvell already have 32-bit ARM chips in servers.

Yesterday, ARM announced two new 64-bit processor cores: a larger one called the A57, which is said to be the company's most powerful applications processor; and a smaller one called the A53, which is said to be the smallest 64-bit processor. Together, the two are designed to be part of the company's big.LITTLE processor configuration. AMD, Broadcom, Calxeda, HiSilicon, Samsung, and STMicroelectronics are said to be licensing the new cores, which are scheduled for delivery in 2014, so that may well be what AMD is using in its upcoming processors.)

The FX series, unlike the A-series APUs, is a straight CPU without integrated graphics, and as such is aimed at desktop systems that will add discrete graphics boards, typically systems geared toward gamers and hobbyists. The new chips start with the FX-8350 with eight integer cores running at 4GHz. The higher-end frequencies and revised cores were designed to allow for faster performance than last year's FX processors, known as Zambezi.

The 8350 will be priced at $195 and is joined in the line by the FX-8320 (3.5GHz, eight integer cores), 6300 (3.5GHz, six integer cores), and 4300 (3.8GHz, four integer cores). The six- and eight-core versions are priced to compete with Intel's Core i5 line, while AMD says the four-core version is more aimed at the Core i3. Note that while many of Intel's chips offer hyperthreading, which allows two threads to run on a single integer core, AMD's architecture instead offers more integer cores, but with each pair working with a single floating-point core and other components.

This is a 1.2 billion transistors chip that measures 315 square millimeters, the same as Zambezi, as is manufactured on Globalfoundries' 32nm high-k/metal gate process. It uses the existing AM3+ motherboards (although a BIOS upgrade is needed) and is designed to work with the company's Radeon HD 7000 Series discrete graphics.

Overall, the reviews seem much more positive than last year's, talking in particular about how well the chip does in heavily-threaded integer workloads such as file compression/decompression, Monte Carlo simulation, and some video encoding workloads. It doesn't seem to fare nearly as well on single-threaded or mixed applications such as image editing, 3D rendering. In general, for gaming, it still seems to lag the competing Intel chips, so it really does seem to depend on the workload and overall the FX chips seem to draw much more power than the equivalent Intel chips. That's not surprising, though; Intel has had the performance lead for some time. I'll be interested in seeing how it does on more workstation and heavy-duty Excel tests, and hope to be able to do some of my own testing on that shortly.

In any case, it certainly looks like a step forward, both in performance and pricing, and more competition in the desktop market is always good news.

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